By any chance do you skip leg exercises? Or do you do mostly isolation exercises or use a lot of machines?

Well don't do that! That is what the problem is. Please read the sticky with the collection of routines. You want something that uses mostly basic compound lifts hitting all parts of the body. So start with that first, and then ask questions from there if you need help.

and take note of how much you eat. It can be quite laborious but try and work out how many calories a day you're getting, doesn't have to be exact. Say for example you're getting 3000, and not getting bigger, up it to 3500, or 4000.

You can take it one step further and monitor how many grams of protein you're getting a day, and tweak that accordingly.

Warm up your muscles before you start working out with a dynamic flexibility routine. make sure you perform glute activation/lower trapz/scap exercises before lifting weights to fire the muscles needed. do compound exercises before single joint exercises. Perform core exercises after your lifting exercises. Perform stability core exercises before movement core exercises. Same goes with all the muscles and joints that need stability. Bad stability? a higher chance of injury. Also, perform sagittal movements before frontal, frontal before transverse. Perform static stretching after the work out.

Don't do too many exercises in one session. You will get burnt out faster and overtrain. Don't spend too much time in the weightroom. An hour and a half at the most (15 min dynamic warm up/foam roller, 1 hour exercise, 15 minute stretching) to get the best out of your work out, warm up, and flexibility.

important: increase the weight every workout for the compound exercises. Challange yourself on the last set and then start with that set weight # the next session. Thats how you gain.

caangelxox wrote:Warm up your muscles before you start working out with a dynamic flexibility routine. make sure you perform glute activation/lower trapz/scap exercises before lifting weights to fire the muscles needed. do compound exercises before single joint exercises. Perform core exercises after your lifting exercises. Perform stability core exercises before movement core exercises. Same goes with all the muscles and joints that need stability. Bad stability? a higher chance of injury. Also, perform sagittal movements before frontal, frontal before transverse. Perform static stretching after the work out.

Don't do too many exercises in one session. You will get burnt out faster and overtrain. Don't spend too much time in the weightroom. An hour and a half at the most (15 min dynamic warm up/foam roller, 1 hour exercise, 15 minute stretching) to get the best out of your work out, warm up, and flexibility.

important: increase the weight every workout for the compound exercises. Challange yourself on the last set and then start with that set weight # the next session. Thats how you gain.

I disagree. That's a good way to NOT put on muscle. I didn't do flexibility, dynamic anything, or any core or stretching stuff.

what do you mean thats a good way not to put on muscle? I am training for strength and that is my focus. Should I not be doing that for strength increase? I am confused here. I thought to build strength you have to challange yourself every session

caangelxox wrote:what do you mean thats a good way not to put on muscle? I am training for strength and that is my focus. Should I not be doing that for strength increase? I am confused here. I thought to build strength you have to challange yourself every session

While strength and mass are closely related in my mind. They are two different things. And an individual should take two generally separate approaches to gaining each. (But generally fitness, powerlifting and bodybuilding are very different things, and approached three very different ways.)

You can't get bigger without getting stronger, you can't get stronger without getting bigger, but one will come faster if you focus on it.

Isn't part of the idea of a sticky that it is focused on a particular topic? If it starts to wander, it loses much of its reason to exist. I almost said "raison d'etre" but I thought that would sound snooty, and I wasn't sure that I could spell it right.

I thought caangelxox post was vague, but not specific enough to determine whether it will work or not. No rep range or volume specified so I don't know how anyone can tell if it's a good or bad hypertrophy program. What was described was more like a template. It's actually similar to what I do.

I agree though we shouldn't let the topic wonder. Although, a big part of getting bigger is getting stronger, too. As a light weight lifter I find it very difficult to get strong and keep my weight roughly the same. Infact as time goes on i'm starting to think it's impossible. But, strength training in a nutshell can be broken down to the following - lift heavy things, whilst in a caloric surplus.... Sounds familiar.... You could argue that you won't get big as quickly, but that depends on the person. If you've stopped making gains on your hypertrophy routine, chances are the best thing you can do is drop the volume, increase the intensity (lift heavier) for a while. Get stronger, basically. Then that would pave the way for size gains when you increase the volume again...

nygmen wrote:
You can't get bigger without getting stronger, you can't get stronger without getting bigger, but one will come faster if you focus on it.

In general that's true, although many who compete in weight class events work very hard at getting stronger without getting bigger. Conversely it's also possible to get bigger without getting much stronger if the lifter only focuses on methods that encourage fluid buildup in the muscles. This is the difference between functional and non-fuctional hypertrophy. When training for size, you have to go after both.

caangelxox wrote:what do you mean thats a good way not to put on muscle? I am training for strength and that is my focus. Should I not be doing that for strength increase? I am confused here. I thought to build strength you have to challange yourself every session

For strength you would do a lot of heavy weight and low reps. You might also do some sub-maximal work progressing up to maximal lifts. There is a lot more to it as well, but that is the core of it.

Your description sounds like training for some kind of sport. Something that requires speed, agility, very good balance and a lot of flexibility.

The point of this thread was really just so we don't get any more posts where people do a bunch of upper body machine isolation exercises and ask for advice on that. You can only say, "don't skip legs, and focus on compound free weight lifts" so many times.

I think it has worked too. Plus it helps the person wondering why they aren't growing. They get a simple answer, very quickly.

All of the above information is useful, but I have a specific question after reading much of the information on the main site.

I'm currently lifting Mon/Wed/Fri, doing a full body routine each day. For most of the lifts I do a warm-up set with 50% workout weight, then do two sets following the warm-up. The last two sets range from 8-12 reps, and if I can get 12 reps I up the weight 5%-10% the next day that I lift. Is this correct, and is there a more efficient way to use my time?

Second, what is push/pull, and is it the same as a "superset"? A lot of lifters throw the term "superset" around, and they use it in a positive manner as if it is a better way to lift. For example, if I work my triceps with lying tricep extensions then follow it with hammer curls to work my biceps, is this efficient? My lifting partner and I currently just make sure we get every lift done, but not in a any particular order.

I've seen progress in the last month, gaining around four pounds of muscle, and I've gone from repping 135 pounds a total of 17 times to repping 145 pounds a total of 17 times. I'm not sure if I can improve my workout or if I should stick with what I've been doing.